chengkp75

One misleading fact, the Gemini states the number of ports/countries, etc, for the entire 3 year cruise, which you must sign up for, while stating the fare for just one year. So, to compare apples to apples, the Gemini fare is $90k.

A large reason for increasing the size of these ships is the decision to go to methanol fuel. Methanol only provides about 35-40% of the energy that an equivalent volume of diesel fuel, or residual fuel will provide, so the ship needs twice the tank volume to have enough fuel to move the ship for its cruises. Additionally, methanol tanks are required to have void tanks surrounding them, with leakage detection systems (unlike conventional fuels), so the volume requirements and cost merely to store the methanol onboard goes even higher. Since the hull volume needs to increase to handle the fuel storage issue, the topsides (hotel) benefits by gaining volume as well.

Cause will always be listed as "unknown" until tests confirm that it is or is not noro. While the ships have onboard testing kits, the results are not perfect, so CDC typically wants a lab test to confirm. Ships report at 0% (they have to report every time the ship returns to the US, whether any GI illness has been reported or not). Then, they have to report if 2% of pax and crew report GI illness, and again at 3%.

Nothing new in the fact that hand sanitizers don't work against noro. And, just to be precise, neither does soap and water. All soap is, is a lubricant that breaks the surface tension (combined with the friction of rubbing the hands together) between the outer layer of skin cells (dead) and the underlying skin, and allows the water to wash these cells, and any bacteria or viruses away, without killing them. As for Benzalkonium Chloride, yes it will kill noro, but it needs between 1-2 hours of contact time to do so. That means the hands need to be wetted with BAC for that entire contact time to work. Even the package of "Wet Ones" posted above advertises them as "anti-bacterial" and not "anti-viral".

NCL officially, or crew scuttlebutt? Huh?

I've seen no information as to why the ship would be "banned" from the inside passage, but not from Vancouver, or anywhere in North America, for that matter.

They've been hiding drugs and things in aerosol cans for decades.

They can definitely smell through tin foil. About the only thing a dog can't smell through is a hermetically sealed glass jar.

If that wasn't someone from engineering, I'd take the statement with a grain of salt. Most of the energy used to make water onboard is "waste heat" that would be discharged overboard as heated salt water if not used to make fresh water. As even the smaller Disney ships will use 5000-7000 tons of water per week, there is almost no way that the ship can load that much water during turn-around (3 2.5" fire hoses running at capacity would require about 24 hours to fill up the ship. Also, any water taken on in port, must be segregated from the ship's supply, and not used, until a coliform bacteria test comes back negative, and that takes 24 hours. Ships generally top up tanks in port only if the itinerary does not allow enough time, at a good steaming speed (the more power the ship uses, the more waste heat is available to make water), to make all the water needed for the week.

Sales tax is charged until the ship is outside state waters (3 nm), not when it reaches international waters (12 nm). When I worked the NCL Hawaii ships, the bridge would call down to the Purser's office and notify them of when we left state waters, and the POS registers were reprogrammed to stop adding GET (Hawaii uses GET not sales tax). Yes, not only beverage package drinks, but any purchase made onboard while inside the 3 mile limit (specialty dining, shops, spa) will be charged GET. GET varies by county (island), from 4% in Maui, to 4.5% in the other islands.

Other cruise lines push bottled water because the passengers want it. Long before they started selling it themselves, they were allowing it to be brought onboard.

Unless it takes on water in ports (which is limited due to costs), every cruise ship provides "RO-quality drinking water" throughout the ship for free. The water from every sink tap, shower head, ice maker, soda gun, or water dispenser on the ship gets water that is either made by RO, or is distilled from sea water. While I agree that plastic water bottles are a scourge, touting RO water as a green initiative (when all ships use them to one extent or another), is false, as there are better ways to produce better (from a purity standpoint) water with less energy (green house gas) consumption to make it.

It doesn't matter whether it is medically prescribed. The ships fall under the laws of the flag state, not the country where the passenger is from, and further, they are restricted by the IMO's regulations on dangerous drugs. Just as some nations will limit or ban certain drugs regardless of whether prescribed by a doctor (and that doctor has no license to practice in their country), even nations like Holland, where marijuana is "decriminalized", it is banned on ships that fly their flag, as the WHO and IMO still consider it to be a dangerous drug, and the ships must meet these requirements. Very similar to the last couple of years, folks asking if paxlovid was available on cruise ships, it would depend on the approval of the drug by the flag state, under whose auspices the doctors onboard operate, not the country where the passenger is from.

The Star isn't really comparable to the Sky, but the Sun is her sister ship. As the PP noted, the Spinnaker Lounge is on deck 11, forward, and has panoramic windows for viewing, was always a favorite of pax when I worked her. The library on deck 6 is always a quiet spot. The Great Outdoor Cafe on 11, is under an awning, so a good place to enjoy being outside, between meal hours, with a bar handy. Deck 12 outside, forward, around the kid's splash pool (kids never seemed to find this) was an area for quiet lounging. This was 15 years ago, but the ship hasn't changed, but maybe the demographics have.

As someone who lives in a 200 year old wood frame house that backs up to about 40 acres of woodland, and who has had both mice and rats in the house (have an annual contract with pest service), nothing in the photo looks like rodent debris to me. Another factor is that on a ship, unlike a house where rodents can roam freely up walls to multiple floors, there are very few ways for rodents to move from deck to deck (it is all steel or concrete fillers). I mention this, because it has been my experience that you will only see rodents on ships near food sources, and passenger cabin decks are not a good source of food. That material looks like the calcium silicate insulation from inside the wall panels (which are only 1/2-3/4" thick, with steel on both sides). It looks like the steel wall panel has corroded, and allowed the insulation, which has broken down over the years of vibration, to fall out.

The legal requirement is that passengers must participate in one drill every 30 days. Whether the ship requires more often then that is at the Captain's discretion.

You do realize that this is what would happen in a real emergency? The muster, whether a drill or an actual emergency, is not about getting to the lifeboats, it is about passenger accountability. The muster should be signaled long before any thought is given to actually evacuating the ship, and is to remove the passengers from the area of the emergency, put them in known, controlled locations, and provide accountability (knowing that everyone is accounted for). That frees up the emergency response teams to deal with the emergency without having to look for stray passengers who may or may not be casualties. Just read about the Star Princess fire, where the passengers were mustered for several hours, yet the Captain had no inclination to evacuate the ship at any time. The muster drill is to get the passengers and crew used to working as a team, with the passengers following instructions from the crew. It provides as realistic a training scenario as possible, for both passengers and crew.

That was a public health situation (i.e. quarantine requirements), dealing with entry into the country, not an issue that deals with the ship's or cruise line's business practices. If it was that easy to require foreign ships to meet a US federal law regarding their business practices, then the foreign flag ships would have been paying US taxes decades ago. This is the basis of international law, and contrary to what a lot of folks think, US law does not apply outside of the US. If you want the price of a foreign flag cruise, you have to realize that you need to put up without many of the legal protections that a US flag vessel (the only ones that US law applies fully to) would provide.

If the Spirit does not meet the "Canadian" emissions standards, then it does not meet the standards for the North America Emissions Control Area, and would not be allowed to sail anywhere within 200 nautical miles of the North American coastline (or Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or the USVI), so your cruise, along with all the other Alaska and Hawaii cruises on the Spirit would have been canceled. Since the cruise started (or ended) in Vancouver, the ship can not have been banished from Canadian waters. The provinces do not have jurisdiction over navigable waters whether within the provincial boundaries or outside. Canada's vessel emissions limits are based on the IMO's North America ECA, as per Annex VI of MARPOL. Where did you get the information that this was due to emissions?

Doesn't really matter, since once you step into the terminal, you are in federal jurisdiction, not state.

I don't believe that the passenger muster signal was made in this case. Unlike HAL, with its 3 step emergency procedure, Carnival does not have passengers return to their cabins. All fires on ships will be first responded to by the "Code Bravo" announcement, sending fire fighting teams to the scene. At some point in the fire fighting process, the "On Scene Commander", and the Captain on the bridge, will decide if the situation warrants mustering the passengers in order to put them in safe, manageable locations, and provide accountability, or whether the situation is well enough in hand to let the passengers continue their activities. And, no ship sends the passengers to their "mustard" stations.😉

The Oasis, Quantum, Freedom, and some Voyager class ships have specially designed splash areas for kids in swim diapers.

Did the new passengers have to muster at the same time? Typically, for back to back segments, you only need to do one drill a month, so those remaining onboard would normally not have to do a second drill.

Just understand that if a trolley goes to the stop where you want to board for continuation, or return to the ship, and it is full, it won't stop, and you'll have to wait for the next one that has space available. The buses only hold about 35 passengers.

Being Russian flagged, the ships are classed by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, which is ranked as about the worst classification (by having the highest rate of ships detained in various countries for violations) society around. These ships would likely either cost a tremendous amount to bring up to standards of other class societies, or would just be financially unsound to do so.